You’ll find legal resources - including important cases, books, and briefs discussed in the podcast - and a full transcript of the audio, on the blog post for this episode: eff.org/pod102

The open source movement focuses on collaboration and empowerment of users. It plays a critical role in building a better digital future, but the movement is changing as more people from around the world join and bring their diverse interests with them. Join EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Danny O’Brien as they talk to EFF board member and Open Tech Strategies partner James Vasile about the challenges that growth is creating and the opportunities it presents to make open source, and the internet, even better.

To James Vasile, an ideal world is one where all technology is customizable by the people who use it and that people have control over the devices they use. The open source dream is that all software should be licensed to be free, modified, distributed, and copied without penalty.

The open source movement is growing, and that growth is creating pressures. Some stem from too many projects and not enough resources. Others arise because, as more people worldwide join in, they bring different dreams for open source. Balancing initial ideas and new ones can be a real challenge, but it can also be healthy for a growing movement. 

In this episode, you’ll learn about

• Some of the roots and founding principles of the open source and free software communities.
• How the open source and free software communities are changing and adapting as more people get involved and bring their own ideals with them.
• How licenses affect the open source community, including how communities are working to bring additional values like protecting labor and protecting against abusive uses to these licenses. Policy changes that could help support the open source community and its developers and how those could ultimately help support transparency and civil liberties.
• How critical open source is to the decentralization of the web and more.

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